


Delusions of Our Childish Days

by Ashura



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Christmas, Family, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-02
Updated: 2010-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When shore leave and a refit of the <i>Enterprise</i> coincide with Christmas, Spock convinces Jim to go back to Iowa for the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delusions of Our Childish Days

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas, nostalgia, sap, allusions to a troubled childhood. Title from Dickens’ _Pickwick Papers_ , epigraph from Springsteen’s _Thunder Road_.) Written for LJ's K/S Advent Calendar 2010.

_We got one last chance to make it real  
To trade in these wings on some wheels  
Climb in back  
Heavens waiting on down the tracks..._

 

The highway stretched dark and endless into the night, frostbitten and snow-glared, a single black line meandering through snowy fields gleaming sickly grey in the moonlight. The pickup’s engine rumbled beneath its hood, tires whirring over potholes and patches of ice. The radio, one of the old terrestrial kind that Jim had trouble even remembering how to work, was blaring out a scratchy rendition of some antique Christmas song between fits of buzzing and sputtering.

“Is there some logical reason,” Spock asked from the passenger seat, after a period of long silence, “that you continue to leave that clearly malfunctioning audio on?”

“Yes, there is.” Jim tried not to snap, but wasn’t completely successful. “It’s keeping me awake. It’s the middle of the goddamn night and it’s snowing. Either the radio stays or you start making small talk.”

A pause. “...Acknowledged,” Spock said, and fell silent again.

“That’s what I thought,” Jim grumbled. The foggy floodlights of the Riverside shipyard shone glaring in the rearview mirror; ahead of him was all open road. It had been years since he’d last driven this road, an angry young rebel with a shiny motorcycle and everything to prove. It felt weird, coming back again. When he was twenty, the highway had seemed to go on forever, and racing down it felt like getting away. Now it felt small, contained, firmly fixed to the earth and the small town he’d felt so trapped in for most of his life.

Well hell, of course it did. Now he was a starship captain who explored distant galaxies as his normal, everyday life. And God, but that was fucked up. Even Jim was pretty sure nobody who knew him as a teenager would ever have expected it. And maybe that’s why it felt so weird, coming back. The fields that stretched out on either side weren’t welcoming, but weren’t forbidding either—just a little curious. It was like the last time he’d put on his leather jacket. It had been his favourite, all the wear in the right places, like armour molded to his body. But he put it on, a year or two back, and it hadn’t felt right. The leather was too stiff, the shoulders too tight; it had felt like putting on a jacket that belonged to someone else.

Iowa felt like it belonged to somebody else.

The radio crackled and launched into a reggae rendition of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Spock leaned across the cab to turn it down.

“Considering the apathy you exhibited toward seeing your family this holiday,” he pointed out quietly, “you are showing remarkable determination to get there.”

“I just don’t want to be driving all night.” Jim glanced at the rearview as the lights of the shipyard faded into the distance. “We’re already going. It’s not like we can pull off and find a hotel somewhere and skip the whole thing now. Well, actually, we could, I guess. You want to change plans?”

He didn’t have to look at Spock to know the look being focused on him. “The reasons for returning,” Spock pointed out calmly, “have not changed. Nor will they.”

Jim sighs. “Yeah, I know. And I know what your vote is. You think we should go.” He didn’t say ‘go home,’ because that would have meant staying on the Enterprise. Which wasn’t really an option, since she was getting a thorough Christmas cleaning and a bit of refitting.

Spock stared ahead at the road and the white lane lines disappearing under the truck’s hood. “I merely think that when opportunities to be with one’s family are rare, it is illogical not to take those that are presented.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, because there wasn’t a lot more _to_ say, to that. “That’s why we’re going.” The reggae ‘Rudolph’ ended and segued into an old Springsteen song that Jim remembered listening to on repeat for most of a year back when he was eighteen, and he leaned over to turn it up.

****

The lights were still on in the old farmhouse when Jim eased the pickup down the driveway. The lingering charred scent of bonfire smoke hung in the air over the crisp chilled smell of snow. Jim slung his bag over his shoulder and led the way to the door. Spock stopped him before they reached it, with a soft—“Jim. Wait.”

Jim turned. “Yeah?”

Spock pulled him close and kissed him. His lips were cold, but it didn’t matter; Jim felt warmer than he had all night.

“What was that for?”

Spock was looking steadily into the middle distance. “You appeared to require physical reassurance.”

Jim blinked. “I did? Not that I ever mind, uh, physical reassurance.”

Spock nodded. “You adopt a certain way of walking, when you are tense, designed to mislead others into believing you are completely sanguine. I have observed this, and I am not ‘others’. You were, I believe the expression is, swaggering. Therefore I concluded that you were in need of support.”

“I,” Jim began, and stopped, unable to protest. “Thank you, Spock,” he settled on at last, squeezed his gloved hand, and rang the doorbell.

Music and the smell of mulled cider greeted them as the door opened. A small, elderly woman greeted them, white hair piled on top of her head, reading glasses tucked into the collar of a shapeless snowman sweater. “There you are, Jimmy,” she said, stepping back to let them in. “Come in out of the cold. Are you hungry?”

Jim hugged her, and he bet that if Spock was monitoring, he’d notice that the need for physical reassurance had dropped a lot in about five seconds. “Hi, Grandma,” he said, and she smelled exactly like he remembered, and for a moment it was like the good parts of being a kid again, with her calm strong presence standing between him and an often-frightening world. “Merry Christmas.” He pulled back, closed the door behind Spock. “Of course we’re hungry. Well. I am.”

“I do not require refreshment,” Spock said cautiously, and then, because Jim had coached him ahead of time about how pointless it was to try to refuse food at his family gatherings, added, “but I would not object.”

“Come inside, then,” the old woman said, bustling them into the main room of the old farmhouse, where the rest of Jim’s family was waiting. “Hey, everybody,” Jim said, trying not to sound like he felt at all awkward. “We made it. Spock, this is my Grandma Dolly—Grandpa Jim—my mom, Winona—brother Sam—sister-in-law Karen—the rugrats are Neil and Jessie. Everybody, this is Spock, my first officer.”

“We know that,” his grandma said dryly. “We watch TV.” She disappeared into the kitchen, and Jim looked around feeling vulnerable again. Spock was standing there all stiff and uncomfortable, not that anyone but Jim would be able to tell. Jim’s niece and nephew had paused long enough to say hello, but were too occupied with some game involving models and marbles to pay any more attention than that. His mother flashed him a fond but awkward smile and patted the seat next to her.

“Sit down, Jimmy. Spock, you, too.” They did, and she asked about _Enterprise_ and Starfleet, and nothing personal, which was a relief and a bit sad at the same time.

Grandma Dolly came back from the kitchen, two stoneware mugs wafting steam into her face. “Here you are, I’ve brought you boys some hot chocolate.”

Spock looked at Jim helplessly, and held the cup without drinking more than a sip till it was cold.

****

“...and right over there,” Jim said, rubbing his gloved hands together to warm them, “is where I fell off the roof trying to climb up and see Santa Claus. Sam and I thought we heard him, but he could reach the gutter and I couldn’t. I had to be taken to the emergency room, and my stepdad tanned Sam’s hide. That was a sucky Christmas.”

“You have been reminiscing for nearly forty minutes,” Spock said, a trace of gentleness in his ever-so-neutral voice, “and have yet to describe a single past Christmas that was not, in your words, ‘sucky’.”

Jim smiled grimly. “You’re catching on. They all pretty much were.” They were sitting on the farmhouse’ gabled roof, bundled up in coats and hats and gloves, watching the sliver of moon shine on the unbroken fields of snow.

“I stopped showing up for them, eventually,” he continued, gazing off into the distance, where the skeletal outline of naked trees poked up against the horizon. “Not till after Sam did. He ran away once or twice a year. When he was sixteen it actually stuck.” He snorted. “I got a hoverbike that Christmas. My mom trying to make it up to me. I called her on it, she cried, I got in trouble.” He remembered it now like someone watching from a distance, not like something that had happened to _him_. A lot of his life was like that, actually. Even a lot of the good parts. He glanced over at Spock. “Sick of hearing this shit yet? Ready to tell me it’s illogical?”

“Jim,” Spock answered patiently, “I agreed to accompany you on this outing. I am aware I influenced you in choosing to pursue it in the first place for the sole purpose of confronting the emotional upheaval of your past. Since then I have partaken of an intoxicating substance and am sitting with you, in subzero temperatures, on the roof. No part of this scenario is the least bit logical.”

Jim reached for Spock’s hand, holding it between his own, still gazing off toward the trees. “But you’re here.”

“Because you are,” Spock said simply.

“I love you,” Jim said, and hadn’t even meant to.

****

His childhood room hadn’t changed much, because nobody’d ever bothered to change it. The bed was still pushed up against the wall, too narrow for one grown man let alone two, under the window where the stars peeked through the curtains. The wall was a collage of star maps, rock bands and pin-up girls, the bookshelf filled with old schoolbooks, stacks of comics, and motorcycle magazines. It didn’t look like someone still lived there, so much as someone had left in a hurry and never come back. Which was, Jim figured, pretty much exactly what he’d done.

“Everybody’s asleep,” Jim murmured, pressing up against Spock’s back. “Except you and me.”

“That is easily remedied,” Spock said dryly. “Go to sleep.”

Jim nuzzled at the back of his neck. “What if I need physical reassurance?”

Spock twisted around in Jim’s arms, squeezed awkwardly against the wall. He lifted a hand to Jim’s cheek, brushing a thumb across his skin, studying him carefully. “I do not wish to wake up your family,” he said, quiet, cautious.

“We won’t,” Jim promised, covering that slim hand with his own, leaning close to lay claim to Spock’s mouth. And despite Spock’s voice reservations, his mouth was warm and pliant and his heartbeat was already speeding up beneath his shirt as he shifted closer to Jim, who wrapped around him under the blankets. _This_ , he thought, silently kissing abstract lines over Spock’s skin, his heart calming as his body grew more urgent, _this is home. Wherever I am, wherever we go together._

And then Spock rolled him into his back, and even his mind was silent.

****

“Uncle Jimmy! Uncle Jimmy! Mister Spock! Wake up!” The shouts nearly covered the sound of small fists banging on the bedroom door. “Santa came!”

Jim blinked awake, confused for one very brief moment about where he was and what he was doing. Then he started to laugh.

Spock sat up, leveling a glare toward the door. “What is funny?”

“Them,” Jim answered, jerking his thumb toward the wall that separated them from an overexcited niece and nephew. “Kids are kids anywhere, I guess.”

“ _Human_ children, maybe,” Spock countered, but then he pulled Jim in for a kiss. “Good morning, _ashal-veh_.”

“Merry Christmas,” Jim answered, but as the pounding on the door had not yet subsided, he shouted almost immediately after—“All right, we’re coming!”

The air was still cold, but the smell of coffee rose from downstairs. Thundering footfalls meant the children had retreated, and Jim kissed Spock again and pulled on his clothes.

“Jim,” Spock asked, his hands resting on Jim’s shoulders, his expression serious. Not that Spock didn’t usually look serious, to other people, but Jim was good at getting the nuances by now. “What is the procedure for this part of the ritual?”

“Well,” Jim said, thoughtful, “we go downstairs and watch the kids go through what Santa brought them—don’t give me that look, they believe in Santa and Sam’ll be pissed off if you change that—and then have some breakfast, and we open up each other’s presents. Then we play in the snow for a bit and have a huge dinner.”

“I see,” Spock said as he pulled away. “And has this always been the established tradition with your family?”

Jim shrugged. “More or less. It all usually goes spectacularly wrong at some point. Somebody starts yelling or throwing mashed potatoes.” He managed a rueful grin. “But you wanted to come, remember?”

“Indeed,” Spock said, looking ever so slightly as if he might be regretting that decision. “I believe I will meet you downstairs in a few moments.”

“Sure thing,” Jim said, and kissed him, and headed downstairs. He could smell bacon, and the kids were still squealing at the top of their lungs. He’d meant what he said about things always going wrong, but he was starting—just starting, mind—to hold the smallest bit of hope that this time would actually be different. There hadn’t been any fights yet. That was mostly because his mom and stepdad had been divorced now for ages, but it wasn’t all of it. He and Sam and Winona were perfectly capable of getting into arguments without any outside influence at all.

Maybe this starship captain gig meant he was just growing up, or something.

*****

The living room was carnage. Torn wrapping paper, ribbons, empty boxes, and parts of toys that were already close to going missing were thrown every which way, the only path through a series of slushy wet bootprints leading to the door. Grandma Dolly was in the kitchen. The kids had gone outside to build snowmen, and Sam, Grandpa Jim, and to Jim’s surprise Spock, had all gone to supervise. Karen was getting some well-earned peace and quiet while she could.

Which left Jim and his mom, holding cups of spicy tea on opposite ends of the couch, surrounded by wrapping paper devastation.

“We’re glad you could make it, Jimmy,” Winona said. She was curled up in the corner of the couch, her legs tucked under her, with a multicoloured afghan pulled over her lap. She was over fifty, but didn’t look it, at least to Jim. He wasn’t sure she ever would.

He shrugged. “I was going to sit it out, but Spock thought I should. And this way I get to introduce him to everybody.” Which had seemed important to him at some point; he wasn’t sure why.

Winona nods, glancing toward the window, where a bundled-up Spock can be seen standing very still and watching the snowman take shape, as if studying it. “He’s really making an effort, isn’t he?”

Jim looked at her in surprise, but nodded. “Illogical human holidays, you know?”

“It’s sweet,” Winona assured him. Jim rolled his eyes, but hey, it was true.

“Neil and Jessie need someone else to play with,” she added, innocent as apple pie, watching the snowman-building out the window without getting up.

“You know that’s not likely to happen, Mom.” Jim’s eyes were going to roll out of his head. “For so many reasons. Biology being the first. Space being a sucky place to raise a family being another.”

She could have risen to that, but didn’t. “Have you talked about it?”

Jim snorted. “Are you kidding me? The only way we could have a kid is if we grow it in a lab or inherit one. But I’ve got...Spock, and the crew, and _Enterprise_. There’s only so much of me to go around.”

“I suppose,” Winona said, but didn’t push anymore. Jim was pretty sure she was smiling.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he heard himself say.

She was watching him, intent over the rim of her reindeer mug. “How so?”

“All this,” Jim answered, waving a hand to include the whole of the room. “Christmas cheer. Pie and snowmen and nobody yelling. I don’t remember us having very many of those. I remember breaking my collarbone and Sam locking me in the barn, and those were the good ones. The rest were all fighting and crying running away. You remember the one where I tried to walk to Grandma and Grandpa’s? I just about froze to death, Elsie Miller’s dad found me on the road on his way home from work.”

“I do remember,” Winona said quietly. Jim hadn’t actually thought she didn’t. She offered him a faint smile. “It takes us a while to get things right?”

Jim was silent a moment. A snowball thudded against the side of the window. “I guess everything turned out okay, at least.”

“I guess so,” Winona agreed.

The door opened, letting in a flood of bitingly cold wind. “Jim,” Spock said, his cheeks faintly green, “your presence is requested as the judge of some sort of contest.”

Jim grinned, rising up off the couch and heading for his coat. “Duty never ends,” he laughed.

****

The highway stretched out before them, bright in the sunlight that reflected off the snowbound fields to either side. The sound of the engine rumbled beneath the hood, the wheels whirring against the road. The radio was still scratchy, blaring out some staticky country song.

“Well, Spock,” Jim asked, flicking the volume down on the radio, “did you have a good time? Still think that was the best thing to do with our Christmas shore leave?”

Spock was turning a coffee mug around in his hands, oversized and painted red to look like Santa Claus’ suit. It had been a present from one of the kids. “I appreciated the opportunity to meet your family,” he said at last. “And participate in your traditions. More to the point, did you?”

“Yeah,” Jim admitted, only a little reluctantly. “Yeah, I did. It was weird, but kind of good to go back. So thanks. Not just for making me do it, but for coming with me. I wouldn’t have, without you.”

“You are welcome, Jim,” Spock said, trying to sound totally neutral about the whole thing, but Jim could tell he was pleased. “We have two more days before we reconvene with the rest of the crew in Riverside and return to _Enterprise_. How would you prefer to spend this time?”

Jim glanced at him sideways, the corners of his mouth twitching upward in an incomplete grin. “There’s this ski resort we can still make it to tonight. I don’t know how you feel about hitting the slopes, but I know the idea of you, me, a hot tub and a roaring fire sounds like a pretty nice way to finish off the trip. What do you think?”

“I sense,” said Spock, “that you have had this planned for some time.”

Jim did grin, then, and it lit up his face. “I figured if things went bad, we’d need somewhere to recover, and if they went well—which they did—we’d want to celebrate,” he admitted. “So yeah, I booked us in. Merry Christmas?”

Spock shook his head, but he was happy. Happy as Vulcans get, anyway. Jim was getting really good at being able to tell. Better than Spock himself, a lot of the time. “It does sound...pleasant.”

“Yep. And,” Jim added smugly, “there’s no chance of waking anybody up.”

Spock did not deign to answer, just watched out the windshield. The road rose before them in a thin, grey, slushy line, meandering through the fields toward the mountains, where the sun was already just beginning to sink behind. Jim hit the gas.

[the end.]


End file.
